Experimenting with New Techniques and Materials

The June meeting was a little sparse of attendees, but not of things to be shared. 

 

 

Sue Robertson showed us the results of her class work at CNCH 2013 at Squaw Valley.  She took Marilyn Romatka’s Viking Knitting class and created a beautiful necklace.  This technique is also called “Viking Chain Knitting” or “Viking Weaving” but isn’t really knitting.

    

She also took Wendy Patrucco’s Cyanotype Printing class and created two different printed pieces of fabric and a printed canvas bag.

  

The third class was Knotted Button Covers with Mushroom Dyed Silk taught by Gayle Still.  Her button was about half finished. 

 

 

Marcy showed us a table runner she wove as a challenge to use linen.  The warp was 8/2 white cotton and the weft the blue linen shown in the picture.  The design is an M’s & O’s pattern on 4 shafts.

 

 

 

She used a blue floating selvedge that created a very neat edge for the piece. 

 

Betsy is working on a five-piece collection of wall hangings/shawls that represent the four elements and the moon.  She has been working on the water element.  She showed us a shawl woven with tencel in an 8-shaft shadow weave pattern.  There are different color blue warp stripes with silver and blue as weft.

Here is some detail of the shawl.  It is very reminiscent of water. 

Betsy also showed us a sample where she played around with a black weft that was woven in treadle order.  It is really quite striking.

Betsy has started working on ideas for the earth piece.  She brought a sample of what the structure of the piece will look like.  This one was woven with 5/2 cotton.

Finally, Ingrid showed two lap robes woven with local llama yarn.  These were done in 3/1; 1/3 twill stripes. 

She also showed us her latest sock yarn scarf - merino wool and nylon yarn.

 

Eye Candy for Weavers

Marcy Elliott's Huck Lace Towel

May's meeting has come and gone and since I have been busy with CNCH, I didn't get to the blog post to share May's wonderful woven treasures. Better late than never!

The photo above is one of Marcy's explorations into the world of huck lace.  Color and texture, you just can't beat this combination.  The towels are so open in weave structure, that I'm sure they will make excellent drying towels.



Dee Jones' Painted Warp Vest

I spent some time in early May, photographing some of the many garments that Dee Jones wove and sewed over the past 10 to 15 years.  This is one of my favorites (although there are many favorites).  I thought that the color is perfect for summer wearing.  This one is a painted warp, set off with buttons that echo the color of the woven cloth.

 

 

This is Sue Robertson's quilt selvedge cloth.  Sue is a quilter and has lots of quilting friends.  They were more than happy to give her the selvedges they cut from fabric for her weaving project.    She made a vest back with this yardage and wore it in the Fashion Parade at CNCH just a week ago.  Hopefully, we will get a photo of the finished vest for everyone to see.

 

 

And this is Sharon Campbell's handspun art yarn.  She was looking for suggestions on how to use it as part of a weaving project.  Lovely colors!

 



We All Have to Start Somewhere - Part III

In our continuing series, here are the first projects from two other weavers. 

Marcy hasn't been weaving very long and her current pieces are excellent.  Here are a couple of pieces that she wove early on.

Marcy's first blanket

Marcy's first sampler

 

 

Ingrid has been weaving for over 20 years.  She got her start in a studio in Michigan with a very talented teacher and lots of supportive weavers.  The first thing she wove was a classic sampler, trying to figure out how to actually weave and then to be able to follow a draft.

Ingrid's 1st sampler

At an early dye class, she learned how to tie up warp for ikat dying.  The colors were pretty wild, but a couple of pieces came out of that class.

Early dye class

Early dye class

She also attempted making fabric from rags - California Rag technique, developed by Trudie Roberts.  From that she made a jacket.



California rag jacket

 

We All Have to Start Somewhere - Part II

Here is Part 2 of our series highlighting how our very talented weavers got started.  Beryl & Igor learned to weave at the City College of San Francisco several years ago. 

Here are two examples of Beryl's early towels. You can definitely see her interest in complicated weave structures started early in her weaving experience when looking at the towel on the right.

A towel is a nice easy first project.






Igor shared two pieces with the group. The first is a sampler. He tried lots of different techniques and structures with this piece.  This was fairly long - the pictures highlight different parts of the sampler.  Even though many new weavers want to have their first piece be a finished item, weaving a sampler allows the student to have the freedom to experiment with structures, color and texture.



 His second piece is a scarf.  

                                Stay tuned for another installment of our early pieces.


 

Two Blue Scarves

One of the challenges the Not 2 Square Weavers gave themselves for this year, was to experiment with chenille.  Almost (if not all) of us have this yarn in abundance and we know we need to get over our fears about worming and start weaving with it. 

Diana Abrell brought this scarf to our latest meeting.  She used a 10/2 cotton warp, with supplemental warp threads in wool and rayon (the pink threads) sett at 20epi.  The variegated chenille in blues, was in a skein which had to be wound into balls.  The structure is plain weave, with floats every few picks for the supplemental warp.  No worming!

Now for Dee Jones' story about her scarf.  Jackie brought lots of embroidery floss as a give away to our group.  Dee used some of her skeins of blue in the weft of this scarf.  Here is what Dee says about this scarf:  "The embroidery floss was used as every other weft. Alternate weft was ringspun rayon, same as the warp. 16 skeins were used for a scarf 6 1/2" x 64". (7" in the reed, by probably about 70" measured on the loom."

Here is the draft from Anne Dixon's Handweaver's Pattern Directory, it is on page 76, the first pattern

We All Have to Start Somewhere: Part I

Everyone who has a hobby, craft or pursues some kind of artistic activity starts somewhere.  There may be 2 year old weaving prodigies, but most people begin with few skills.  Recently the Not 2 Squares shared their weaving beginnings.  Here's a glimpse at a few of the first efforts of our members:

One of Dee's first projects was a red bag.   Here is an example of some later work - a beautiful vest.  There's lovely sewing and detail.  Also a recently woven scarf.

Diana's first sampler, with a detailed look.

One of her first projects was a checkered towel.








One of Gus' first projects was fairly ambitious overshot fabric to be used to cover dining room chairs.  The upholstery lasted many years before being replaced with newly woven fabric. 

 

 

 There will be more examples in future posts.

 

 

 

 

Fabric wefts for Luxurious Clothing

At the March meeting, there were several projects that had been woven using fabric strips for the weft.  The photo above shows details in a jacket woven and sewn by Sue Habegger.  She used a rayon challis fabric and cut the strips on the bias to keep them from fraying during the weaving and finishing process.  The resulting jacket is almost like chenille cloth and very elegant.  The photo below is her sketch for the jacket and a samples of original yardage, handwoven twill for the front opening and the cloth for the body of the jacket.   I believe she used a pick  or two of fine yarn between the shots of fabric weft to make the cloth more supple.

 

 

 

Dee Jones brought out a couple of garments she had woven and sewn using fabric wefts.  The first is a vest woven with silk strips.  Dee folded the fabric strips in half as she wove, but  didn't tuck in the ends of the fabric wefts and let them peek out of the finished cloth.   This is a project from several years ago and Dee didn't remember the details about how it was woven, but it looked as though there might be finer thread picks between the fabric shots in this cloth as well. 

 

 

The final jacket (below) was also woven by Dee.  She says it has been worn a lot since she made it, yet is looks like new.  This definitely has fine thread picks between the fabric shots.  Look at the lovely purple lining and elegant buttons!

Rug for the Mud Room

Jackie brought another amazing rug to our meeting on Tuesday.  She wove this rug for her mud room and you won't believe the effort that went into this stunning piece.

First of all, the materials used in the rug are from worn out T-shirts, polo shirts and other knit tops from her family.  She designed her weft plan and then put it on a spread sheet to calculate how long each knit strip should be and when to sew in a dark piece for the meander pattern in the rug. That's right, each strip was calculated individually.

Jackie says she would never use red in her household furnishings, but since she had the red rug warp and it was going into the mud room, she went ahead and used it.  She didn't expect that the rug would swallow the red color so completely.  Yes, it does alter the overall color and appearance, but it certainly doesn't look red.

She encountered a few problems with various knits stretching differently and wasn't too encouraged that the rug would be flat, but somehow after it went over the breast beam, everything was nicely tamed.

 

She had more warp and more knit strips, so she wove two smaller rugs to go with the large one.  No dark pattern, but they are still interesting because of the varying fabric colors.

 

Tying on a New Warp

Marcy found a neat four shaft draft in Weaver's Craft #17 for something the author called a mosaic twill.  She wove this in Christmas colors for gifts this past holiday season.  She liked the towels so much, she attempted something new for her.  She tied on a new warp to the existing one.

Everything went pretty well, but she ended up with some threads that didn't get into the mix from the old warp and had a couple of empty heddles.  She started weaving, but could see the line in her cloth where there was a missing part of the pattern.  Right about that time, we had a Not 2 Square meeting at her home and together we found the missing heddles and she added the missing threads into the warp.

We anticipated there might be a problem because these threads were sleyed more closely, but Marcy went ahead and wove off the rest of the warp because she didn't want to resley her reed.

She used a blue weft in the picture below.  See if you can find the more prominent white line where the threads are sleyed more closely?





Marcy's solution to the visible line was to use the same color weft as warp.  The resulting towels have a lovely texture because of the weave structure, but for the most part the sleying problem isn't visible unless you hold the towel to the light.

Many lessons in one warp!  These errors are practically invisible to a non-weaver, but if you are sitting behind the reed, nothing escapes your notice!  Bravo to Marcy in her quest to put something new in her "weaving skill bag".